Posted on 03/04/2019 1:34:03 PM PST by billorites
Two political action committees founded by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s top aide funneled over $1 million in political donations into two of his own private companies, according to a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday.
The cash transfers from the PACs — overseen by Saikat Chakrabarti, the freshman socialist Democrat's chief of staff — run counter to her pledges to increase transparency and reduce the influence of "dark money" in politics.
Chakrabarti's companies appear to have been set up for the sole purpose of obscuring how the political donations were used. The truth about democratic socialism Watch Full Screen to Skip Ads
The arrangement skirted reporting requirements and may have violated the $5,000 limit on contributions from federal PACs to candidates, according to the complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group.
Campaign finance attorneys described the arrangement as “really weird” and an indication "there’s something amiss." They said there was no way of telling where the political donations went — meaning they could have been pocketed or used by the company to pay for off-the-books campaign operations.
PACs are required to disclose how and when funds are spent, including for expenditures like advertisements, fundraising emails, donations to candidates, and payments for events and to vendors.
The private companies to which Chakrabarti transferred the money from the PACs are not subject to these requirements.
The complaint names Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti as respondents. It asks the FEC to investigate and audit the two PACs, saying they were engaged in an "an elaborate scheme to avoid proper disclosure of campaign expenditures."
Tom Anderson, director of the National Legal and Policy Center's Government Integrity Project, said: “It appears Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her associates ran an off-the-books operation to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, thus violating the foundation of all campaign finance laws: transparency."
Chakrabarti, 33, is a Harvard graduate and technology entrepreneur who became an organizer for Bernie Sanders during the socialist's 2016 presidential campaign.
He founded a PAC called Brand New Congress in 2016 and another called Justice Democrats in 2017, with the stated goal of helping elect progressive candidates to Congress. One of those candidates was Ocasio-Cortez, who last November, aged 29, became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.
According to the Brand New Congress website, the PAC would build a “unified campaign” infrastructure including fundraising, organizing, rallies, and advertising so that progressive congressional candidates across the country could "plug into," saving the individual campaigns time and money.
"Our idea is really to run a single unified presidential-style campaign that is going to look a lot like the Bernie Sanders campaign,” said Chakrabarti in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in May 2016. "The campaign infrastructure and fundraising is set aside from the campaigning."
In 2016 and 2017, Chakrabarti’s PACs raised around $3.3 million for the project, primarily from small donors. During this time, the committees transferred over $1 million to two shell companies controlled by Chakrabarti with names similar to one of the PACs, Brand New Campaign LLC and Brand New Congress LLC, according to federal election filings.
A few weeks after starting the Brand New Congress PAC, Chakrabarti formed one of the companies, Brand New Campaign LLC, in Delaware, using a registered agent service and mailbox-only address.
Over the next seven months, as small-dollar political donations poured into the PAC from progressives across the country, the committee transferred over $200,000, 82 percent of the contributions, to the company Brand New Campaign LLC. The payments were for "strategic consulting," according to federal election filings. They were sent to an apartment address listed for Chakrabarti in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan.
In 2017, Brand New Congress PAC transferred another $240,000 to Brand New Congress LLC, also for "strategic consulting." Another PAC co-founded by Chakrabarti that year called "Justice Democrats" transferred an additional $605,000 to Brand New Congress LLC in 2017.
Brand New Congress LLC is not registered in any Secretary of State databases. It is unclear where or when it was incorporated.
Adav Noti, the senior director of the Campaign Legal Center and a former FEC lawyer, said the arrangement was highly unusual and seemed intended to obscure the destination of the funds.
"None of that makes any sense," said Noti. "I can’t even begin to disentangle that. They're either confused or they’re trying to conceal something."
Noti said it would be simpler to set up a consulting company and work directly with campaigns to provide services for a fee rather than creating a federal PAC and sending the money to a company controlled by the same person.
"It does seem like there’s something amiss. I can only think of really two likely possibilities for this sort of pattern of disbursements," said Noti. "One is the scam PAC possibility — they're really just paying themselves and they’re concealing it by using the LLC. The other is that there’s actually another recipient, that the money is going to the LLC and then being disbursed in some other way that they want to conceal."
Bradley A. Smith, a former chairman of the FEC, said he has never seen such an arrangement. "It's a really weird situation," he said. "I see almost no way that you can do that without it being at least a reporting violation, quite likely a violation of the contribution limits. You might say from a campaign finance angle that the LLC was essentially operating as an unregistered committee."
Chakrabarti declined to comment on the FEC complaint or provide details about his companies’ financial activities. Corbin Trent, a spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez, declined to comment.
Zeynab Day, communications director for the Brand New Congress PAC, said Chakrabarti was not currently affiliated with the group and that it recently went through a "transition period." She referred questions about the LLC to Chakrabarti. “I’m unable to answer any questions about the LLC … I am not informed about them. We are not an affiliated group,” she said.
A spokesperson for Justice Democrats said he did not know why the PAC paid so much money to Chakrabarti’s LLCs. When asked what the Justice Democrats PAC does on a daily basis, he said “it’s very clear what we do” but declined to elaborate.
Chakrabart founded Brand New Congress PAC, in April 2016. According to a statement released by Justice Democrats PAC last May, Chakrabarti "was the only controlling member" of the company Brand New Congress LLC and "took no salary." The statement added: "Saikat is lucky to have a small side business that generates him enough income that he is able to do all of this work as a volunteer."
When it comes to BRUTAL robbery and murder, the Amish thing is almost always an accurate play on who really did it.
But wow Reid, mccain, bushes, clinton and on and on and on.
The “Amish” aren’t even close to their league in political theft yet.
They may get there :)
But unlike the Italian mafia, the bloods and crips and whatever other garbage never understood where real power lay.
Getting involved in politics. Controlling unions. Controlling local leaders and not so local leaders.
Too busy posting their crimes on facebook :)
AOC doesn’t have to “pay” for what she did in our sense of justice. This complaint gives the Democrats leverage to rein in that out of control loud-mouth.
Reminds me of the Awan Pakistani brothers. The rat party will not touch this. If anything it’s already been white washed. The repubes won’t do anything. In on week, it will all be down the rabbit hole.
It doesn’t matter if they get caught - that’s the point. They have oppressed minority immunity and as for Cortez, she has like, OMG 4 or 5 immunity cards Female, No Controlling Legal Authority, Democrat, congressman, I’m sure there’s more
aah yes, the D'Alesandro/Pelosi technique....a true path to Democrat success.
More likely Hindu.
It looks like he took advantage of her ignorance of the law, and stole money from her campaign.
Meanwhile, her ignorance of the law seems to also have led her to funnel campaign funds to her boyfriend.
And another newbie with obvious problems finding a good legal advisor was paying herself a salary after she got elected, which is not allowed either.
He’s a big fan of Subhas Chandra Bose, the Hindu nationalist ally of Hitler in WW2. Ya can’t make this stuff up!
The big money comes from steering billion dollar contracts to your families’ businesses.
Come on, they shouldn’t treat this guy any different than the one other person prosecuted, Dinesh D’souza.
What did the Hyphen know and when did she know it.
Who goes under the bus?
No joke, no exaggeration. Imagine if an R wore a Goering T-Shirt.
He has a face you would love to punch.
So Chakrabarti's tech skills musta come in handy when donations to Bernie were wire-transferred to the DNC
and ended up in Hillary's account. Debbie W/S headed the DNC at the time and was ousted b/c of her bias for Hillary.
<><> Chakrabarti did find out about the tech theft, didnt he?
<><> Chakrabarti did speak to D/W/S about it, didnt he?
<><> Chakrabarti did tell Bernie about it, didnt he?
<><> Chakrabarti was working for Bernie, wasnt he?
That's her mother holding the Bible.....boyfriend is grinning tall guy on right with the beard.
She got caught putting her live-in boyfriend on the Congressional payroll.....
and the buzz is he's got top level security clearance over OUR SAFETY and SECURITY.
Reports reveal suspicious payments to AOC’s boyfriend began during her campaign.
FACTS ON FILE
<><> Absent a waiver from House Ethics, family members have to be volunteers to get official house.gov email addresses,
<><> AOC’s office apparently doesn’t believe in having unpaid workers; according to her COS they have no volunteers in the office.
<><> So boyfriend Roberts is designated as staff but also isn’t on AOC’s staff,
<><> even though Roberts showed up Friday morning in the House directory as processing into her personal office as a staffer.
===============================
Taxpayers demand to see all of AOC's financial records as a member of Congress....outlays WE paid for.
We need to see AOC's correspondence, emails, snail mails, hard drives, wire-transfers, text files, offshore banking activity, and the like.
ACTION—Demand to see govt reports of all tax dollars outlaid to AOC, and everyone employed in her office.......including her boyfriend and family members.
ACTION--DEMAND CONGRESS SEND YOU ALL AVAILABLE GOVT INFORMATION specifically govt vouchers submitted by AOC:
<><> credit cards,
<><> gift cards,
<><> cell phone/landline bills,
<><> electronic/wire transfers,
<><> detailed expense accounts,
<><> transportation expenses
<><> office expenses
<><> office equipment expenses
<><> office supplies,
<><> unusual stamp purchases (a classic govt corruption MO)
<><> housing allotments,
<><> clothing allotments,
<><> entertainment
<><> household help,
<><>reimbursements for varied ancillary interests.
==================================
ACTION-—TAXPAYERS DEMAND TO KNOW WHO IN THE AOC PERSONAL AND GOVT CIRCLE IS CASHING GOVT PAYCHECKS, WHO HAS APPLIED FOR GOVT PENSIONS, AND WHO SHE MIGHT HAVE PLACED ON THE GOVT PAYROLL.It’s an old trick politicians use-—hand-picking people and putting them on several govt payrolls. (Long after you think they’re gone, they’re still cashing in).These maneuvers leave a huge paper trail.
CALLPRES TRUMP 202-456-1414
email at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact @POTUS or @realDonaldTrump on Twitter!
US CONGRESS SWITCHBOARD: (202) 224-3121
Look at that stance on her.
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